Carson Hocevar made the trip to the Land of Lincoln to compete with the best-of-the-best dirt late model drivers in the opening race of the FloRacing Night in America Series at Spoon River and he had a tough go of it.

Hocever had solid speed to start off the night. He qualified 12th in Group A posting faster laps than some of the best in the country including current World of Outlaws Late Model Series points leader Nick Hoffman, the most recent Dairyland Showdown champion Ryan Gustin, and Ricky Thornton Jr., who just won with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at Circle City Raceway last weekend.

With a 12th place qualifying effort in Group A, Hocevar started 6th in Heat 2 just two spots out of a transfer spot. On the first lap, Hocevar went to the high side, but went a little too high and got over the cushion and eventually looped it drawing a caution. After going to the back of the field, Hocevar was able to advance one spot to finish in 9th.

That 9th place finish would send him to the first B-Main where he started 10th. He would lose one spot and finish 11th and fail to make the feature. On Facebook, Hocevar assessed his performance, “Got our ass kicked tonight lol. Just went wrong way on adjustments after qualifying. First time for all of us, strong field to contend with!”

Despite the butt kicking, Hocevar will be back in action tonight at Lincoln, “I have to fly out now for cup sim tomorrow. I’ll be at the Longhorn Chassis merchandise trailer at 4 pm tomorrow at Lincoln Speedway tomorrow.”

Hocevar plans to race the entire FloRacing Night in America series schedule. He spoke with FloRacing at Texas this past weekend about the decision, “I’m excited to kinda get going. To get three nights especially when we get rolling here racing, it’s going to be nice for me to get in the swing of a dirt car in that world and everything and really get to enjoy it. That schedule. Start hot laps into a feature late night and then get rolling again to a completely different race track the next night and then the night after. You know just get to enjoy it and do it with Flo is a lot of fun.”

When asked about running for the championship, he said, “It’s fun to stack up. I don’t imagine we’re going to be a contender or anything. We’re just getting rolling with it and getting started. It will be nice to see where we stack up between all the nights. You can get lost on if we have a really good night or a really struggle night. It really compares against the really good guys at where we are in the points and everything, of where we stack up. It’s just a totally different universe we’re restarting in, really.”

NEXT: Briggs Danner Making World of Outlaws Late Model Debut At Selinsgrove